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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Abe Lincoln is Back in the Theatre

While stuck in school on a beautiful day, Bart Simpson once started
daydreaming about rafting down the Mississippi River with Huckleberry Finn.
Turning his head, he suddenly noticed Abraham Lincoln on the raft with them.

Indeed, Bart was free to remake Lincoln however he wanted, and he
wasn't the first person to do so. Since his assassination in a Washington D.C.
theatre in 1865, Lincoln has been alternately remade into a hero and a
villain. Many people either see him as the man who singlehandedly freed
the slaves or the man who cruelly burned the Southern states back into the
Stone Age.

In Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, Lincoln is remade once
again - this time as a revenge-seeking, axe-wielding destroyer of the undead.
Based on the novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride, Prejudice
and Zombies), it's exactly as the title suggests (unlike Naked Lunch,
as Bart Simpson finds out).

In this version of history, the United States is still being torn
apart by the evils of slavery, but the slave-owners are actually vampires who
use the slaves for food. Young Lincoln initially starts hunting them for
revenge, but his motivation changes to a passion for social justice. He stops
hunting, turns to politics and becomes President. There, he gets bogged down
directing a bloody and seemingly futile civil war against the vampire-infested
South. The war eventually turns his way after Lincoln dusts off his
silver axe for one more scrap with the Nosferatu.

Although I'm sure I'm swimming upstream, I really enjoyed the
movie. It was fun, at times sad, and genuinely scary at points. There are
plenty of plot holes, but I think the movie understands that the plot is so
silly that people who need to have a plot make sense aren't going to like it.

What impressed me the most were the pace and tone of the
movie. It would
have been easy to get bogged down in the details of vampiric involvement in the
stages of Lincoln's political career or the Civil War but instead it moves
quickly to a select few important moments in Lincoln's life. The tone of
the movie, as best I can describe it, is knowingly silly while pretending to
take itself seriously. Amazingly, it stayed consistent from the opening to the
end. I was worried that it would spiral into an overly dramatic saga or just
become comically absurd, but it never did.

After sitting through previews for "The Watch" and
"Gangster Squad", I also found Vampire Hunter refreshing
in that I only recognized one actor (Alan Tudyk, who had a relatively minor
role). Maybe I'm getting old and cranky, but I feel like I've seen too many
movies that try to blow you away with an all-star cast to paper over a so-so
product. In this movie, Lincoln is played adeptly by Benjamin Walker who
effectively channels the character's wisdom, humour and passion for justice and
revenge. Rufus Sewell plays the head vampire (of course there has to be one)
and brings a cool, intelligent kind of evil to the story.

Rufus Sewell as Adam, the Vampire in Chief

Some of the people I went to see Vampire Hunter with didn't
like it very much. I think my fondness for it has something to do with the fact
that I've read a very good biography of Lincoln called Team of Rivals,
by Dorothy Kearns Goodwin. Lincoln's real life, like many of his
countrymen and countrywomen, was incredibly difficult and tragic. He is an
extremely sympathetic figure and he makes a good, if unlikely, template for an
action hero. His real life ended when he went to the theatre but now the
theatre has brought a surprisingly compelling version of him back to life.

Glad to read a positive review of this. I'm seeing it this Friday as I like Rufus and sounds like he didn't disappoint!

I still think this perhaps should've been done in more tongue-in-cheek style as that's what I thought of when I read the title. In any case, I hope this won't be as bad as the critics made it out to be, but then again I hardly ever agree w/ them anyway.